Upbeat News Monday
- Editor OGN Daily
- 9 minutes ago
- 3 min read
What better way to start the week than with an eclectic global collection of upbeat news stories?
Honorary Coach
Team USA makes history by welcoming a familiar face as its first-ever Honorary Coach: Snoop Dogg! Snoop will employ his signature humor and heart to motivate Team USA athletes on their road to the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 and beyond and raise awareness of Team USA. He joins the Team Behind Team USA as Coach Snoop, lending his support, commentary and wisdom to hundreds of Team USA athletes. The new role builds on the good vibes and energy Snoop Dogg brought to the Paris Games as the ultimate meme-worthy Team USA cheerleader, commentator (equestrian or crip walking??) and torchbearer.
Great Barrier Reef
In the Great Barrier Reef, an AI-powered robotic assistant is helping Australian Institute of Marine Science researchers restore damaged coral reefs. The Deployment Guidance System scans the seafloor to find sections with bleached reef segments, then drops down coral larvae housed inside ceramic analogues “specially designed to offer protection to juvenile coral while they grow to adulthood.” DGS uses its deep-learning algorithm to make the drops at optimal times, within 3 feet of the targeted area.
Elizabethan Portrait
A 16th-century painting of an English duke sold for $4.2 million last week, making it the most expensive Elizabethan portrait ever auctioned. The artwork depicts Thomas Howard, Fourth Duke of Norfolk, a powerful nobleman during the reign of Elizabeth I, and was created by Flemish painter Hans Eworth in 1562. A decade after the portrait was painted, the Tudor queen had Norfolk executed for treason. Sotheby’s London said the 463-year-old portrait is among “the most significant” privately owned portraits from the era of the Tudors, the English royal dynasty that began with Henry VII in 1485. “It is spectacularly well preserved and in the most amazing condition." Sotheby's told the BBC: “Norfolk was the most important, powerful man in the kingdom during the reign of Elizabeth I. Short of the monarch herself, he really is the most significant in the country … and acquired huge tracts of land across England.”
World Record
Thousands of dogs and their owners recently met up at Bosques de Palermo park in Buenos Aires on a mission to shatter the unofficial record for the world’s largest gathering of golden retrievers. And, according to local calculations, it looks like they succeeded. The final count was 2,397 golden retrievers, with some dressed for the occasion in soccer jerseys, hats and colorful bandanas. Organizers said their gathering was heads and tails above the previous record of 1,685 set last year in Vancouver. Guinness World Records is yet to confirm this.
Out of This World
NASA has finished construction on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will “expand our understanding of the universe.” Named for NASA’s first chief astronomer, the infrared space telescope will travel 930,000 miles to the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2 and “peer through dust” and “across vast stretches of space and time” to solve “profound” astrophysics mysteries, including the fate of the universe and “whether we are alone,” NASA said. It could launch as early as fall 2026.
Smoking Gun
AI technology is being used to help fight poaching in rainforests across Cameroon, Congo and Gabon. The Elephant Listening Project installed microphones able to detect gunshots in the forests, and when triggered, the devices send a real-time alert to officials who can try to catch illegal hunters. The AI, developed by the Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at Cornell University, aims to distinguish gunshots from other loud jungle noises, lowering the risk of false positives.
"May and October, the best-smelling months? I’ll make a case for December; evergreen, frost, wood smoke, cinnamon." Lisa Kleypas
On This Day
15 December 1939: A citywide celebration accompanied the premiere of Gone with the Wind at Loew's Grand Theater in Atlanta, Georgia. Actresses Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel and director Victor Fleming were among those who won Academy Awards for their work on this four-hour film set in the American South during the Civil War. Adjusted for inflation, it became the highest grossing movie of all time.
Today's Articles
‘Windustrial Revolution’: UK's wind industry leads the world and can now power more than half the nation's homes.
That Time of Year: For the Stanley family, it's their annual opportunity to unleash creative chaos in the form of their now-infamous Christmas cards.
Mood Boosting Video
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